Scott's World -- UPI Arts & Entertainment

HOLLYWOOD, March 14 (UPI) -- The Directors Guild of America, perhaps Hollywood's most effective union, is the best Oscar indicator of all.

Year in and year out the five directors nominated for the guild award are the most worthy artists in the movie and TV industries.

This week the 12,400-member DGA at its 54th annual awards dinner honored the men and women it thought created the best films and TV shows of 2001.

Some 1,600 members and guests jammed the capacious banquet room of the Century Plaza hotel to honor their own.

The DGA awards are unique among other Hollywood guilds and unions, and different from the powerful Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, because they represent both of the country's lively arts mass media: movies and TV.

Directors and their creative teams are members of the same union, but the difference between movie and TV achievement is apparent. Movie directors are the cream. TV directors are not as highly esteemed, demonstrated by the higher value placed on films.

The difference might be compared to major league baseball and the welter of minor leagues. A single baseball team annually wins the World Series while there are many minor league champions.

And only one individual wins the DGA award for best motion picture director of the year, but there are several winners of best directors in various TV categories.

Thus, the highlight of the five-hour DGA banquet this week was winner of Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Films.

He was Ron Howard, one-time movie/TV child star -- "The Music Man" and "American Graffiti" -- and of long-running TV series -- "The Andy Griffith

Show" and "Happy Days."

Howard, like many directors, graduated from small screen to big screen, from free medium to paying medium, a measure of the contrasting values between TV and movie accomplishments.

Howard, at 48, is a veteran actor-producer-writer-director of scores of movies and TV projects. He was the only American nominated this year.

Howard was nominated for "A Beautiful Mind."

The most noted of the foreigners was Ridley Scott, the distinguished producer-director of such films as "Alien," "Thelma & Louise," "Gladiator," "Hannibal" and "Blade Runner."

Scott was nominated for "Black Hawk Down."

Nominated along with Scott and Howard this year were newcomers Peter Jackson of New Zealand, Baz (Bazmark) Luhrmann of Australia and Christopher Nolan, a tyro from England.

Jackson was nominated for "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring."

Luhrmann was nominated for "Moulin Rouge."

Nolan was nominated for "Memento."

Howard and Scott are popular and respected among DGA members. Jackson, Luhrmann and Nolan are relatively unknown in Hollywood and by most Americans.

The preponderance of foreign nominees this year suggests the DGA membership rises above nationalism and crony-ism in weighing the merits of worthy nominees.

The single glaring flaw in this year's DGA nominations was the absence of maverick Robert Altman, who directed "Gosford Park," a huge box-office success and a universal favorite among reviewers.

But Altman, a contentious old party, WAS nominated for an Oscar this year for "Gosford Park" and may well be the winner come March 24 at the 74th Academy Award presentations.

Also absent from the DGA nominees was David Lynch, another non-conformist director of independent mind, who also was nominated for an Oscar for his "Mulholland Drive" drama.

Neither Luhrmann nor Nolan was nominated for an Oscar this year for reasons best known to the 98,000-member motion picture academy.

Howard doubtless is the favorite to win the Oscar, if for no other reason than that only five out of the 54 DGA best director winners failed to win the Oscar as well.

Unlike the DGA award, the Oscar is often won for an individual's popularity or previous record for top-notch films, which increases Howard's chance of winning the Academy Award.

On Luhrmann's behalf, it should be noted his "Moulin Rouge" was nominated for best picture by the academy, while he was overlooked for best-director nomination.

It is a Hollywood truism that every movie is the creation of the director, a work in which the director's vision is the dominant element of what is eventually seen on the screen.

Ergo, it is difficult to comprehend how a movie can be nominated, much less win an Oscar, for best picture without recognizing and rewarding the director for its creation as well.

Yet that has been the case in 19 of the 73 past Oscar winners for best picture.

That being the case, it is natural to assume this year's front-running film for best picture, "A Beautiful Mind," and leading candidate for best director, Ron Howard, will be the big winners at the Academy Awards.

But don't overlook "Lord of the Rings."